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The Nexus Times: Wildstar Trail

I’ve decided to change things up a bit this week. Considering I’ve spent about 90% of my Wildstar experience in PvP, I wanted to delve into the PvE world a bit and more specifically the adventures. To get a little warmed up, and because I didn’t want to wait in an excruciatingly long queue, I started with the level 15 Riot in the Void instance. Since the game scales you back to the level of the instance, and I was tanking in PvP gear, it wasn’t as much of a breeze as you’d think. We never completely wiped, but party members did tend to drop every now and then.

For those who might have skipped it, Riot in the Void takes place in a prison…where a riot is going on. Adventures are kind of a new concept for MMORPGs because the players get to vote on the next course of action; meaning every instance can have multiple routes with different endings. What this also means is that in order to master these adventures, and prepare for their level 50 veteran modes, players have to memorize three or more additional ways to beat it. Since I like a challenge I’m personally not going to complain about the added complexity, but some main tanks find it an irritating task.

THE MALGRAVE (OREGON) TRAIL

After my initial warmup I decided to move onto something a little closer to my level, The Malgrave Trail. This adventure is a clear example of how much fan service was really put into Wildstar. I’ve begun to wonder how much of Wildstar is original content, as opposed to cleverly devised references. I didn’t realize it until the instance began, but The Malgrave Trail is setup to replicate The Oregon Trail, which just happened to be one of my favorite computer games growing up.

Who thought The Oregon Trail could successfully be rehashed again?

I could hardly contain my excitement when I saw the gauges measuring food, water, animal feed, and group exhaustion. Once the choice selections started to come up I was in nostalgia heaven. Should we take the long safe route around or go straight through the desert? Do we need to stop and gather supplies or visit a trading outpost? As our convoy moved along we were forced to fight off wildlife and bandits alike. The convoy members were even suffered from illnesses and bug swarm attacks.

Our quest began in Thirsty Creek and took us across the Malgrave Desert to Fort Westwatch. The farther along we trekked the more attached I became to those I had sworn to protect; I even felt a little sad when one of the NPCs collapsed and died due to suffering too many wounds. I momentarily began to contemplate whether we should try and take the safer paths instead of the ones that sounded exciting. Clearly those thoughts only lasted for a few milliseconds as I voted to use the abandoned airship for travel and to defend a group of militants against swarms of oncoming Dreg.

The last stop before our journey ended was probably the most exciting, as we were tasked with laying down a gauntlet of mines, robots and turrets to defend a small outpost from the Dreg. Waves of 3-4 Dreg would come at us simultaneously and my party had to make strategic choices regarding which group to assault and what we should let the NPCs handle. Things went smoothly for a while, until we saw a hulking beast come charging towards us. The Dreg apparently had a few tricks still up their sleeves and Ob’mar was no joke with over 1 million hit points.

Physics has no place here.

In the video below you can see how we handled Ob’mar with relative ease. He wasn’t overly difficult, but I could see a group struggling with him if they didn’t properly dodge the telegraphs or if they got caught out of position. His attacks basically consists of a few wide area claw sweeps, a breath attack and some falling rocks; generally he’ll focus everything on the tank, but occasionally he’ll leap in the air and try to smash the rest of the party.

After making quick work of big Ob’mar, my party and I strolled into Westwatch as a regular bunch of heroes. The waiting Dominion soldiers promised our caravan safe refuge and we were rewarded with a fat stack of loot. Overall, I would consider it a successful and exciting mission. This is definitely one adventure that Oregon Trail fans shouldn’t skip over.

THE DOMINION STRIKES BACK

A couple of weeks ago I discussed how Team Legacy had organized a massive Exile raid into the Dominion capital of Illium, and they succeeded in taking it over by killing everything in sight. Team Legacy made some pretty outlandish, if not comical, demands and were back this week to make sure they weren’t forgotten about. Well this time we were ready for them. Waves of Team Legacy and friends stormed the gates of Illium only to be slaughtered in the streets and forced to regroup.

I’m proud to say that I was one of the defenders of the city that day and took down dozens of Team Legacy members single-handedly. While making our final stand in the Legacy Church my killstreak multiplier went into the 20’s before my skill bar literally broke from excitement. I’m actually not kidding, Neutralize bugged out and decided it would cost more to cast than my maximum amount of energy (the cap is supposed to be 75). By then it wasn’t really important as the bodies of the non-believers were strewn across the pews. We had our victory this day.

Let the bodies hit the floor.

ULTRA STRAIN COMING TO WILDSTAR!

Wildstar’s first major content patch is scheduled for release today! Ultra Strain is promising to deliver some insanely twisted new content including additional zones, enemies, missions, gear, and cosmetics. Carbine truly has one sick imagination as they’re going to be throwing everything we try not to think about into the mix including: pustules, globules, cysts, boils, spores and more. Be sure to check back next week as I “get a lil’ Strain” in me.

About Nick Shively

Nick is an eSports and RPG enthusiast. He can normally be found in the deepest parts of a dungeon or in the arena slaying opponents. Nick has been a gamer since an early age and involved in the industry since 2011. He obtained a degree in journalism from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in 2015.